Blood orange and pink grapefruit sorbet with limoncello

After a big Christmas meal, there's nothing better than a few mouthfuls of this sharp and sweet blood orange and pink grapefruit sorbet. Fill a glass with a few scoops and pour over the lemon vodka, or limoncello

Ingredients (Serves 4-6)

juice of 5 blood oranges (should give about 500ml juice)
juice of 2 pink grapefruits (should give about 300ml juice)
150g sugar
limoncello, to serve

Scrub and dry the fruit and, using a zester, remove the zest of the oranges. Dissolve the sugar in 200ml water in a small saucepan over a low heat. Add half the orange zest and bring to the boil for 2-3 minutes. Allow to cool and strain.

Squeeze the juice from all the oranges and grapefruits and combine it with the cold syrup and reserved, uncooked zest.

Pour into an ice-cream maker. Freeze/churn for 20-25 minutes and pack into a plastic container. Freeze for at least an hour before serving. If you haven't got a machine, pour into a plastic food container and freeze for 2 hours. Take out of the freezer and stir with a fork. Return to the freezer and repeat this process twice, stirring at two-hourly intervals.

Allow the sorbet 20-25 minutes in the fridge to soften slightly before serving. Put 2 scoops per person into a glass and pour a little limoncello over each one.

Zuppa Inglese

Christmas just isn't Christmas without trifle. This classic Italian version literally takes 10 minutes to put together with bought ingredients from your local supermarket. I do like to add my own chocolate to the custard rather than buying chocolate custard – this ensures a quality chocolate flavour.

Ingredients Serves 4-6

125ml espresso coffee
125ml coffee liqueur
2 tbs cognac, or brandy
1 litre vanilla custard, homemade or shop-bought
100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1 x 16cm round sponge cake, cut into 1cm slices
finely grated dark chocolate or unsweetened cocoa powder, to dust

Stir together the espresso, liqueur and cognac. Put half your custard in a pan over a low heat and slowly melt in your chocolate. Once melted, remove from the heat.

Start with a little vanilla custard at the bottom of each dish and top with a layer of cake slices. Moisten the cake generously by spooning over the espresso mixture. Follow this with a layer of chocolate custard. Repeat the cake soaked with espresso mixture, and top with vanilla custard. Repeat until all the cake and custard have been used, finishing with a layer of custard. Chill for at least 4 hours, or overnight. Dust with dark chocolate or cocoa powder to serve.

Cheesecake in a glass

This is the perfect end to a midweek dinner party, the kind you didn't know you were giving until presented with a guest list mid-afternoon. You simply chop strawberries, crush digestive biscuits and whip cream cheese and cream, then layer up quickly in some waiting glasses. Like this, they can stand for about an hour, so you can make them up just before you sit down for supper. If you want to make this in advance – and it's a versatile recipe that doesn't need to be made last minute – simply leave the glasses in the fridge, layered up with the digestive crumbs and cream cheese mixture and covered with clingfilm. Top with strawberries on serving. Serves four.

IngredientsServes four

200g strawberries(or 1 big punnet)
1 tsp caster sugar
4 digestive biscuits
100g cream cheese, at room temperature
2 tbsp icing sugar
125ml double cream
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp vanilla extract
4 small glasses (of about 150ml capacity; I find a small martini glass looks prettiest)

Quarter the strawberries, then cut in half again, to give pretty small dice. Put into a bowl, sprinkle with caster sugar, cover with clingfilm and shake the bowl once or twice.

Leave the berries to macerate while you put the biscuits into a freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin until you have a sandy bag of crumbs.

Measure the cream cheese and icing sugar into a bowl and whisk by hand. Add the cream, lemon juice and vanilla, and whisk gently to combine.

Divide the biscuit crumbs equally between your four glasses, and arrange in the bottom of each one. Spoon the cream cheese mix on top, dividing it equally between the glasses and covering the biscuits.

Divide the sugar-shiny strawberries between the glasses, to give a glossy, red-berried layer on each glass.